


some kind of frightful

by desastrista



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, Halloween, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 12:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16159253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desastrista/pseuds/desastrista
Summary: Aimeric and Jord visit a haunted house. It's not exactly what they expect.





	some kind of frightful

**Author's Note:**

  * For [misura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/gifts).



> This is my CRIMINALLY late gift to misura for the Fandom Loves Puerto Rico fandom auction. Thank you so much for your patience, even as I acknowledged I was late several months ago. (I have fallen off the fic writing wagon almost entirely this year to work on [some original work.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15934334)). I hope to have your other, make up fic done soon! 
> 
> Otherwise, happy October everyone! I've never been inside a haunted house.

“Look at this,” Aimeric practically shoved the phone under Jord's nose. Jord looked down to see a large house with a very badly photoshopped full moon in the background. 

“THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF VERE,” the image read. “So spooky they only let us open it for a month!” 

“I think it's only open for a month because October is the only time anyone wants to go to a haunted house,” Jord frowned. 

“What?” Aimeric asked. 

“Never mind. So, you want to go?”

Aimeric made a dismissive noise and pulled the phone back. “No. Haunted houses are lame.” But Jord saw the way his gaze lingered on the screen. Aimeric could be very proud about the strangest things. 

“I don't know,” Jord said, fighting a smile. “I think it might be fun to try it.”

Aimeric pretended a moment of indecision. “Fine,” he huffed. “Just because you want to go.” 

But for all his attitude he laced his fingers in Jord's. Jord was pretty sure he was grinning like an idiot at the moment. Maybe he didn't always understand Aimeric, but he was always willing to try his best.

 

 

“I'm not scared of haunted houses,” Aimeric said as they waited for the attraction to open that weekend. Technically they were waiting in line, but since there was still no one else there, even more technically they _were_ the line.

It was the third time so far Aimeric had made such a statement. At no point had Jord asked if he found haunted houses scary. 

“I've never been inside one,” Jord replied. “They're probably a little spooky.” Jord considered himself a man with a healthy set of fears. He wasn't thrilled about spiders. Clowns were definitely out of the question. The real terror, a large amount of responsibility with little oversight, was probably too abstract to be featured in a haunted house. He wondered what Aimeric found scariest.

Right now the answer appeared to be “Jord not knowing his opinions about haunted houses". Aimeric crossed his arms. “I went to one once as a kid. It was all dumb stuff. People in rubber masks. Fake blood on the wall. I'm sure this will be more like that.” 

Jord wasn't so convinced. “They did say this was supposed to be one of the scariest houses in town. There were a ton of reviews saying it was actually haunted.” 

Of course most of those reviews looked like they had been copy and pasted by fake accounts, but Jord didn't want to rush to any false conclusions. 

Aimeric shot him the undeniable ‘whose side are you on?’ look. Jord had never expected to find himself pitted in a battle between Halloween cliches and his boyfriend. At least the choice was clear. “I mean,” Jord hastily amended. “It's probably among the scariest, but even that probably isn't much. You know. Because haunted houses are lame.”

The words didn't seem to have quite the desired effect. Aimeric’s arms were still crossed, and his cold stature did not thaw even when Jord wrapped his arms around him. “Yeah,” Aimeric finally said to no one in particular. “Haunted houses are lame.” 

Jord wondered who he was trying to convince.

 

 

Once the haunted house opened and they ventured inside, Jord privately thought Aimeric had summed up the situation pretty well. These haunted houses were probably overrated. There were, according to the more detailed ads Jord had read over as they waited, “three stories of terror.” There was definitely three stories, Jord would give them that. Anything else seemed like a stretch.

The first floor was supposed to be some kind of haunted psych ward, but Jord thought it might scare a health inspector, an advocate for thoughtful representation of the mentally ill, and no one else. They had tried to place fake blood on some of the walls and medical equipment, but the dye and consistency of the fluid was all wrong. It looked like a patient had just gone really wild while eating strawberry jam. Not exactly the stuff of nightmares. It also didn't help that the decorations looked so cheap that when the lights flickered Jord wondered if it was by design or if management simply wouldn't pay for an electrician to take a look at them.

For that reason, Jord didn't even blink when they had climbing up the stairs and the door that led to the second floor wouldn't open. He just pushed his weight against the door. It still didn't budge.

A plastic skull dropped from the ceiling in front of him and started laughing manically. Jord just stared at it. He could see the speaker in its jaw. 

Aimeric, however, screamed. And then when he saw what had actually fallen, he swore under his breath. 

“That thing looks like they got it at the dollar store,” he complained. 

The lock of the door clicked and Jord finally was able to open the door.

“Also, jump scares are so cheap,” Aimeric added. His voice was still a little breathy, like he was still recovering from the scare. All Jord added as commentary was, “This floor looks like it's circus-themed.”

Aimeric let out a huff. Jord thought he probably intended it to sound bored, but it came out ragged. Jord reached out a hand to hold Aimeric's.

“I hope there aren't clowns on this floor,” he said. Not quite a grand gesture of sympathy, but Jord had never been good at those. At least the words made Aimeric smile. 

It turned out Jord was wrong about the clowns. Jord was almost comically wrong about the clowns. The floor was filled with them. A white face with red makeup peeking out from a corner, paintings of clowns with eyes that followed you across the room, recorded laughs playing over the loudspeakers. It was so overdone and yet so underwhelming that Jord felt his fear of clowns receding in the face of this inadvertent exposure therapy. Aimeric's grip tightened a few times in his hand, though, and Jord squeezed back a few times to reassure him.

They were almost at the end of the floor when an actor in a clown suit jumped out in front of them with a movie-soundtrack-perfect cackle and sprayed them with water from a plastic flower he wore. Jord caught sight of the price tag sneaking out of the ridiculous red wig and laughed loudly. 

The actor looked peeved at that reaction.

Aimeric, who had a millisecond earlier let out a started scream, yanked his hand away from Jord and pushed the doors to the stairs open. Jord followed at an apologetic trot. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean anything by it --” 

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Aimeric shrugged, but he wouldn't turn back to look at Jord. He reached the door and pushed hard against it. 

The door didn't move. 

“Not again,” Aimeric muttered. 

“Watch out for falling skulls,” Jord tried to joke. Aimeric didn't laugh. He just closed his eyes and leaned forward against the door, as if willing it through sheer force of mind to open. 

A minute passed and then another. Nothing fell from the ceiling, but the door didn't unlock either. Finally it was the loudspeaker that crackled to life. “We're just having some technical problems,” a bored, squeaky voice announced omniously.

_Oh god_ , Jord thought to himself, _they've finally found something truly scary: being trapped and depending on an underpaid, unmotivated employee to rescue you._

“Should we just go back?” he asked. They climbed back down the stairs and found that had gotten stuck too. 

“This has to be a fire code violation,” Jord muttered under his breath. 

Aimeric, however, didn't say anything. He just sat on the bottom step and buried his head in his hands. He wasn't crying -- at least Jord didn't think he was crying -- but he looked close. 

“Hey, hey,” Jord rushed over to his side and wrapped his arms around him. “It's alright. They'll get this worked out in no time.” 

“I hate haunted houses,” Aimeric muttered in a muffled voice. 

“I know. They're super lame, and a waste of money.” 

“No,” Aimeric finally looked up at Jord. There was a redness to his eyes and Jord wondered if he had blinked away tears. “I've actually been scared.” 

Jord knew that too, but he didn't think that was what Aimeric wanted to hear. 

“It's so embarrassing,” Aimeric continued, trying to discretely wipe his eyes. “I know you think it's lame. And objectively I'm sure it is lame. But that just makes it worse every time I do get scared, because I know I shouldn't.” 

“Aimeric,” Jord gripped his shoulders tighter. “There's no shame in saying you're scared. It's a haunted house. It's supposed to be scary. At least they're doing their job right if you're scared.” 

“But you're not scared.”

“People get scared by different things. That's normal.”

Aimeric was quiet for a moment. Then finally he said, in a soft voice, “Every Halloween for as long as I can remember my brothers have always found something I'm afraid of to make fun of me for. That haunted house I mentioned I went to as a kid? We went as a family when I was seven and I cried because an actor in a sheet was too scary a ghost for me. They still won't let me live it down.”

“That doesn't mean you did anything wrong. It just means your brothers are assholes,” Jord pointed out. He had met all three; he was speaking from experience on this matter.

For the first time Aimeric leaned back into his arms. “Thank you, Jord,” he whispered. Jord gave him a quick kiss on the forehead. 

 

It took another ten minutes for the doors to unlock. Aimeric and Jord’s first view of freedom was a locksmith kneeling by the door with a man in a suit and a blood-splattered clown both looking nervously over his shoulder. The man in the suit -- who turned out to be the manager of this haunted house -- apologized profusely and offered them a full refund. 

“I can even get you a buy one ticket get one free discount if you want to return,” the manager offered as they were heading to the exit. 

“Sorry, but I don't think we'll be coming back,” Jord answered. 

In the fresh air outside, Aimeric gave a sigh of relief that quickly turned defeated. “We could still go home and watch a scary movie or something,” he said.

Jord countered, “Or we could watch something you actually want to watch, instead of something you just feel like you want to watch.” 

They ended up curled up on the couch, watching a romcom that didn't require a lot of thought and featured absolutely no ghosts, demons, witches, or anything remotely spooky except how perfectly coiffed the heroine’s hair remained throughout the entire movie. Jord liked Halloween, but leaning over to steal another kiss from Aimeric, he personally thought this was a perfectly good way to celebrate the season.


End file.
